When arts planning becomes the point rather than the process. Why your creativity may be dependent on being bored. Are MFA degrees a waste of time if you want to be an artist? Broadway breaks more records. And three new ways to see traditional art.
Boston Arts Plan - All Process, No Beef? The new mayor of Boston aspired to to his city being an arts town, a place where culture flourishes. So … [Read more...]

Why aren't the arts something we can all get behind? Maybe it's somewhere in the psychology of how we like what we like? Revealed: nobody reads arts reviews anymore (says an editor who hates to run them but wants to "support" the arts). Where the money is in music (hint: not for musicians). And is "This American Life" undermining public radio?
Go Team! Why Don't The Arts Unite Communities … [Read more...]

Disrupting the orchestra model, doing away with artistic directors, a cure for what ails the Met Opera, how our ideas about knowledge are changing, and recreating Leonardo (no kidding!)
What does Disruption Look Like In The Orchestra World? Does it seem odd that there have been so few experiments in orchestra models? Of course many of the things that make an orchestra are fixed - musicians, … [Read more...]

This week: a great example of the de-monetization of audience, the deadening burden of being a critic, some contradictions about how we use data in the arts, why technology is complicating our fetishment of original art, and remembering a time before words were processed and forever changed how we write.
Cautionary Tale: I created a video. It went viral with hundreds of millions of views, but … [Read more...]

What Does "Inclusive" Mean To A Performing Arts Center? The Kennedy Center held an event to talk about inclusiveness of its offerings. But no one seemed to be able to define exactly what that means. Why is it that many in the arts believe that "inclusiveness" means getting more people to define culture the way in ways that might not feel inclusive to a lot of people? Is inclusivity merely another … [Read more...]

This week: Do the Met Museum's financial woes say anything about today's museum business? Who wants to see art in mobbed museums anyway? Prince's career as a control freak. A realignment of power in cities. And diversity as fetish object.
Met Versus MoMA: Lessons About Popular Taste In The Balance Sheets? Last week the Metropolitan Museum announced a deficit of about $10 million and plans to … [Read more...]

This week, a groundbreaking deal for Broadway actors and dancers, James Levine finally decides to retire from the Met Opera, a debacle at the National Ballet of Romania that quickly escalated to involve the country's Prime Minister, a warning about fetishizing "creativity" as the key to success, and a cautionary question about what machine intelligence might look like.
James Levine finally … [Read more...]

What business success in theatre looks like, our over-obsession with creativity as a catch-all answer to success, how the art markets really work, how taste gets confused with pretension, and machines' inroads to art.
Theatre is a big gamble but when it hits it REALLY hits: We're used to being dazzled by the huge budgets and box office of movies. Theatre not so much. Mostly, theatre is a risky … [Read more...]

A number of stories this week tackled the meaning of greatness in art (even if they didn't explicitly frame it that way). A changing culture requires changing definitions of greatness, but defining "great" has often been problematic.
Wealthy patrons have funded great art throughout history. And of course the wealthy have had many different reasons for their patronage. One of the strongest was … [Read more...]

This week's best reads hover around existential questions. What arts organizations should exist? Does truth exist? Can theatre really change anything, and should it even try? Canada's new government makes an existential bet on culture. And do our tools define art?
Arts Organizations At The Existential Crossroads: Some have argued that when arts organizations have outlived their missions, they … [Read more...]

My picks for the five most interesting stories we gathered this week.
The Arts' Existential Challenge Arts organizations, along with every business sector trying to cope with sweeping changes wrought by the internet, are struggling with how to reinvent for the future while not alienating its past or present. "What's the answer? Some would say that reinvention invariably is brutal — in the … [Read more...]

Researchers find links between what you watch and how you behave, how women are changing classical music, fascinating fights over who owns Picasso, a Golden Age for New York theatre, and concerns about the integrity of museums.
You are what you eat, right? So are you also what you watch? Listen? Read? Makes sense. In that case, studies are quite suspicious of watching television. Researchers … [Read more...]

New York gets its first new major museum in decades. English National Opera continues its slow-motion implosion. The relationship between art and critics frays. Some counter-intuitive findings about creativity from scientists. And some cultural industries that are booming.
The Met's new Breuer Building (the former Whitney Museum) opens to massive expectations. This new building will … [Read more...]

Arguably, the dominant cultural issue of our time is the changes in how people are finding and getting culture. In response, business models supporting culture and the kinds of culture being made are also changing. It also underpins debates about diversity, engagement and power.
Some broad themes this week:
1. How we want the culture we want
Record Profits As Concert Business Booms The … [Read more...]

1. Is Funding Really The Top Issue In The Arts?
Doug Borwick says no. "Insufficiency of funds will never go away. It’s a state of being in the nonprofit sector. Overfocus on this as an issue can get in the way of addressing the causes that might be contributing to it."
Michael Lind writes that taxpayer shouldn't be funding the arts. "Why should writers get $25,000 for ‘travel, and general … [Read more...]

Douglas McLennan

I’m the founder and editor of ArtsJournal, which was founded in September 1999 and aggregates arts and culture news from all over the internet. The site is also home to some 60 arts bloggers. I’m a … [Read More...]

About diacritical

Our culture is undergoing profound changes. Our expectations for what culture can (or should) do for us are changing. Relationships between those who make and distribute culture and those who consume it are changing. And our definitions of what artists are, how they work, and how we access them and their work are changing. So... [Read more]

Peter Nelson on Too Many Artists Or Not Enough Value?: “For purposes of this discussion how are we defining "artist"? Are the various creatives involved in the advertising industry, the…” Mar 17, 13:02